A Beginners' Guide to Drugs for Girls

I am a girl. If you are also a girl, you’ll doubtless have been offered plenty of useful tips for life. Tips on things like how to hook Mr Right and not get into unmarked taxis, how to juggle both a family and a career and how to halve your vagina-age. But, good as that stuff is, (and it is great), has anyone ever taught you the basic Ys and Ns of getting high? Probably not, and that's why most of us are worse at it than boys.

Here are some pointers for the beginners out there so you can get high without becoming that girl slumped in the corner of the night bus with vomit all over your shoes and lockjaw so bad your teeth have all snapped in half.

NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS AFTER 5 AM
This is a hard and fast rule for anyone, not just a girl thing. Given that it's inevitably the point in the evening when fun topples over into sadness, bad decisions, universal incoherence, terrible music and conversations about how your friends don't respect you enough, it's a cut-off point to keep in mind at all times.

DON’T TAKE DRUGS WHEN YOU’RE ON YOUR PERIOD
Do you really think that after three pills (if you're a girl, never go higher) you’re going to remember what time your tampon needs changing? You won’t. Fuck TSS, you’ll look like a walking abattoir. Combine this with a 95% probability that you’ll want to have sex when you’re high and you have a perfect recipe for homemade shitcake right there. When guys find out they’ve wasted their entire night trying to get into what is now a womb-smeared Three Mile Island, you'll probably be stuck giving a lame blowjob for three cum-less hours. Numb drug dick + 12 hours spent gurning = a few days walking around like you've got Moebius syndrome.

LEARN HOW TO ROLL
This is important for any kid who doesn't want a life spent sniveling in the shadows without a driving license or a job or a flat of their own. But it’s doubly important if you happen to be a girl because the world is sexist and the last thing we need is you playing up to that shitty stereotype.

DON’T GET TOO COCKY
Don't talk to bouncers when you’re high. We’ve all done it but their jobs are boring and if anyone knows what someone on drugs looks like, they do. Expect confiscation, ejection or – worse – end up dating them when you're 14, cheat on them when they're in prison and then have your life Raoul Moated beyond recognition once they get their hands on a shotgun.

DON’T BE A LEECH
No-one's going to listen to me when I say this, but: NEVER take an individual line of coke from anyone. Trust me, it's good advice. If you’re getting on it, commit and buy your own. You’re going to want a lot of it and there are no words in the world to describe how icky it is watching someone else scout around for spare coke (that's an oxymoron BTW). Guys will use coke to persuade you to fuck them and if you think you’d never do that for drugs you’ve obviously never run out of coke at 3 AM.

BEWARE THE LEECHES
When boys tell you ‘You’ve had too much’, what they often mean is ‘Let me have the rest of your ketamine’ so don’t let some concerned arsehole throw you off course. However, if you're puking, blacking out and you can feel your liver dissolving into your bloodstream, maybe you should slow down. Let's not turn this drug deal into a manslaughter.

BOYS: HURRY UP AND CUM
Boys: when you’re fucking us or have us down on our knees, please concentrate. The crap about how drugs keeps you going for hours is not necessarily music to our ears and the chances are that, at this seedy stage, we just want a quick shot of satisfaction. Any blowjob that goes on longer than 20 minutes is tedious enough sober, so when we’re rapidly coming down on the piss-soaked floor of an unlockable toilet cubicle, get in and get out as quickly as you’re obliterated body will allow you to.

DON’T FORGET YOUR BACKBONE IF YOU COME BACK BONED
Don’t go around telling everyone some guy took advantage of you. It’s lame for you because you’re basically admitting you’ve slept with someone you wouldn’t have slept with sober, and it’s lame for them because you just accused them of rape.

MAKE FRIENDS WITH SOMEONE IN SPORTSWEAR
Boys won’t do this because they think they’ll get beaten up, but befriend someone in sportswear and you’ll never be in need of a Rizla.

WALK AROUND
Double-dropped and still not up? Grab a guy and walk anywhere. I have no idea why, but the thought of a mission is one that really lets your brain know that it should be flooding your body with drug feelings. By the time you return to the party you’re guaranteed to be in a cute mood and if the guy's any good you'll have formed a "special bond" which, six or seven months down the line, he'll confuse with "love"; something he's already confused with "fancying your mate".

IF ON GAK, DON'T KODAK
The camera is not your friend, it's a bastard enemy. Why do people choose the evenings when they're at their most ugly and stupid to spend the night pointing cameras at themselves and each other? Round these people up and leave them to die on an island. A twisted mouth, one eye rolled back in your head, mascara and eyeliner applied like bruises beneath sweaty hair on a prostitute's red face and clothes stained with every liquid in the room isn't a look that needs preserving in a digital format for strangers to view on the internet for all eternity.

GO HOME
Home is where your heart is? No it's not: home is where your bed is. It's where YOUR keys open YOUR door, it's where you can expel all of last night's poisons from your body in comfort and most importantly it's a place you can tell other people to get out of (and not the other way around).

GAU NATUREL
Make-up and drugs do not go together. You'll sweat most of it off like a melting ice sculpture and what's left smudged across your face looks nowhere near as chic as your reflection on the back of that iPod suggests. When you're in a dark room surrounded by a load of other people who can't keep their eyes going in a straight line you won't really care what you look like anyway.